Designing and Evaluating Usable Technology in Industrial Research: Three Case Studies (Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics)

This book is about HCI research in an industrial research setting. It is based on the experiences of two researchers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Over the last two decades, Drs. John and Clare-Marie Karat have conducted HCI research to create innovative usable technology for users across a variety of domains. We begin the book by introducing the reader to the context of industrial research as well as a set of common themes or guidelines to consider in conducting HCI research in practice. Then case study examples of HCI approaches to the design and evaluation of usable solutions for people are presented and discussed in three domain areas: - item Conversational speech technologies, - item Personalization in eCommerce, and - item Security and privacy policy management technologies In each of the case studies, the authors illustrate and discuss examples of HCI approaches to design and evaluation that worked well and those that did not. They discuss what was learned over time about different HCI methods in practice, and changes that were made to the HCI tools used over time. The Karats discuss trade-offs and issues related to time, resources, and money and the value derived from different HCI methods in practice. These decisions are ones that need to be made regularly in the industrial sector. Similarities and differences with the types of decisions made in this regard in academia will be discussed. The authors then use the context of the three case studies in the three research domains to draw insights and conclusions about the themes that were introduced in the beginning of the book. The Karats conclude with their perspective about the future of HCI industrial research. Table of Contents: Introduction: Themes and Structure of the Book / Case Study 1: Conversational Speech Technologies: Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) / Case Study 2: Personalization in eCommerce / Case Study 3: Security and Privacy Policy Management Technologies / Insights and Conclusions / The Future of Industrial HCI Research

Clare-Marie Karat is a Research Staff Member in the Policy Lifecycle Technologies department at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, New York. Dr. Karat's HCI research interests are in the areas of policy, privacy, security, usability methods, usability cost-benefit analysis, conversational speech technologies, and personalization. Under Dr. Karat's leadership, the Server Privacy ARchitecture and Capability Enablement (SPARCLE) Policy Workbench research project has created innovative policy authoring and management technologies and interaction methods to provide users and organizations with effective means of managing information. She also has technical leadership roles in the Army Research Laboratory International Technology Alliance (ARL ITA) project on security policy management of information in mobile ad hoc networks and IBM's Open Collaborative Research on Policy Frameworks for Security and Privacy project with academic colleagues at CMU and Purdue Universities. Dr.Karat is an editor of the book Designing Personalized User Experiences in eCommerce, published in 2004. She is well known for the Computer User's Bill of Rights and for creating a cost-benefit methodology for analyzing the return on investment in usability. Her editorial board memberships have included ACM interactions, the British Computer Society's Interacting with Computers, and Elsevier's International Journal of Human Computer Studies journals; and she has served as a reviewer for the ACMCommunications of the ACM, IEEE Security and Privacy and the IBM Research and Development journals. She has chaired international conferences and held a variety of technical committee roles in the ACM CHI, HFES, IFIP INTERACT, and SOUPS conferences. Dr. Karat has presented keynote addresses, taught seminars, published numerous papers in technical journals and conference proceedings, and contributed to many books in the fields of HCI, policy, privacy, security, and personalization. She has been awarded a number of patents for her technical work over the years. Dr. Clare-Marie Karat was awarded the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award in 2009 and is a Senior Member of ACM.John Karat is a senior researcher in the field of human-computer interaction. Over his career with IBM Development (1982-1987) and Research (1987-current) he has worked on the development of research-based guidelines and principles for user interface design (including the chairing committees for the development of ANSI 200 and ISO 9241 HCI standards), researched and advised on design collaboration (resulting in an early book on the integration of HC and Software engineering), researched and developed speech-based systems (including the design of IBM's first large vocabulary desktop speech recognition system), researched and designed early electronic medical record systems (for Kaiser Colorado Region and Barnes Hospital in St. Louis which identified many interaction aspects required for improved patient care through better records). His research also includes publications in information search and unstructured knowledge management, entertainment applications, personalization, and security and privacy. At IBM Research, he has been a researcher, project leader, and manager. John was recently co-leader of the IBM Privacy Research Institute (2005-2008), established to advance the importance of privacy issues in IT globally. He has also worked to advance industry/academic collaboration as project leader for an open collaborative research (OCR) initiative in privacy and security policy management with Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, and Imperial College (2006-2008). The IBM OCR initiative seeks to reduce obstacles to collaboration through the advancement of open systems. He has been awarded seven patents (addressing speech recognition interfaces, search mechanisms, privacy policy management, and general help systems) and received a number of internal IBM awards for invention achievement and other contributions. John has been awarded the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award and was named a Distinguished Scientist by ACM.